Representation and explanation
Philosophy of Science 51 (December):550-72 (1984)
| Abstract | Functionalism faces a problem in accounting for the semantic powers of beliefs and other mental states. Simple causal considerations will not solve this problem, nor will any appeal to the social utility of semantic interpretations. The correct analysis of semantic representation is a teleological one, in terms of the biological purposes of mental states: whereas functionalism focuses, so to speak, only on the structure of the cognitive mechanism, the semantic perspective requires in addition that we consider the purposes of the cognitive mechanism's parts | |||||||||
| Keywords | Belief Cognitive Functionalism Science | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,701 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesHartry Field (1978). Mental Representation. Erkenntnis 13 (July):9-18.
Jay F. Rosenberg (1994). Comments on Bechtel, Levels of Description and Explanation in Cognitive Science. Minds and Machines 4 (1):27-37.
William Bechtel (2010). How Can Philosophy Be a True Cognitive Science Discipline? Topics in Cognitive Science 2 (3):357-366.
Sven Walter (2010). Cognitive Extension: The Parity Argument, Functionalism, and the Mark of the Cognitive. Synthese 177:285-300.
William S. Robinson (1999). Representation and Cognitive Explanation. In Understanding Representation in the Cognitive Sciences: Does Representation Need Reality, Riegler. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub.
David Rose (2006). Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological and Neural Theories. Oxford University Press.
Ned Block (1996). What is Functionalism? In Donald M. Borchert (ed.), [Book Chapter]. MacMillan.
Stephen R. Schiffer (1986). Functionalism and Belief. In Myles Brand & Robert M. Harnish (eds.), The Representation of Knowledge and Belief. University of Arizona Press.
Ned Block (1980). Functionalism. In Ned Block (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads32 ( #37,960 of 549,113 )Recent downloads (6 months)2 ( #37,390 of 549,113 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
